Poplars on the Epte

About this artwork

The elegant poplar trees on the banks of the River Epte, seen against a patchy blue summer sky, fuse with their reflected image in a network of brightly coloured brushstrokes. This is a work from Monet's celebrated series of poplar paintings made between the spring and autumn of 1891, the year after he had settled in Giverny. He used a boat as a floating studio and captured beautifully the shimmering effects of sunlight on water. The trees were ready to be sold for timber, but Monet, in partnership with a timber merchant, bought the trees at auction so that he could continue painting them.

Monet settled in Giverny, some fifty miles north-west of Paris, in 1883. Although he continued to travel widely across France in the 1880s, his new surroundings at Giverny gradually became the focus of his work. The pace of his painting began to change. While he remained devoted to the spontaneity of Impressionism, he was also growing increasingly frustrated with the more superficial qualities of the style: ‘I am becoming a very slow worker … the further I go, the more I understand that it is imperative to work a great deal to achieve what I seek.’

The conflicting demands of immediacy and a desire for what he described as ‘more serious qualities’ led Monet to start working in series, painting the same subject under varying lighting conditions and at different times of day. The Scottish National Gallery is fortunate to have two superb examples from these series. The first is one of some thirty paintings of haystacks. Most of these were painted in the autumn and winter of 1890 and fifteen of the haystack pictures were shown to great acclaim at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris in 1891. Our other series painting is from the celebrated sequence of paintings of poplars on the river Epte, a tributary that joins the river Seine near Monet’s home at Giverny. He painted them in the autumn of 1891 having paid a local timber merchant to delay felling the trees until he could complete the series. When he showed fifteen of the poplar paintings together in 1892, the exhibition was even more successful than the haystacks and the critics were lavish in their praise for Monet’s effort to create variety in unity.

At first glance, our painting of poplar trees displays all the features that we associate with impressionist painting. The surface is covered in short, broken dabs of paint which suggest the shimmer of outdoor light and the movement of shifting reflections in the water. The colour is keyed high to suggest the dazzling effect of bright sunlight, and there is an immediacy to the whole scene that evokes a passing moment. As we look more closely, however, we become aware of the order that the artist has imposed on the view; we begin to notice how the sweep of vertical tree trunks and their reflections are arranged to create a pleasing decorative rhythm, dividing the composition into four neat quadrants with a circle of light at the centre of the composition. Although Monet would have begun this painting on the spot, perhaps using his floating studio boat, it is likely that this work, like most others in the series, was elaborated and finished back in his studio. Working in series allowed Monet to demonstrate the seriousness and depth with which he scrutinised his subjects. By carefully adjusting the design of his compositions, by building up rich layers of texture and through subtle refinements of colour, he was able to retain a feeling of instantaneity but also go beyond the informality and sketchiness of Impressionism.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.

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